I was trying to figure out which of my FB groups to pose this question to, but mostly they are full of ridiculous moms with no tact. Then it occurred to me to poke my nose in here because you guys won’t steer me wrong!
This is a question about Christmas gifts. Specifically for my infant. I had Baby Silver back in April and even though everything appeared normal during the pregnancy, she was born with a laundry list of life-long health issues. I will maybe elaborate elsewhere if anyone is interested. The birth and all of her challenges were/are pretty raw and traumatic still so I haven’t posted.
So the thing is my family are really excessive in the gift-buying department. They are all packrats, and think that everyone must want as much *stuff* as they do. We moved to a very small house after the wedding, because we wanted to live in a certain area, on an acreage, and I have aspirations of minimalism. People have already bought her SO MUCH STUFF. And tons of it came from well-meaning aunts who shopped garage sales so I can’t return it. I don’t want the hassle right now of selling/rehoming/donating (our nearest place to even donate stuff is an hour and 15 minutes away...)
My one aunt literally bought me a second stroller because one of my other aunts said I would probably “want something smaller” than the one I PICKED OUT AND PURCHASED MYSELF. I don’t need another one and because of baby’s special needs we wouldn’t find umbrella strollers useful anyway. The one we have works perfectly.
Thats the thing. My kiddo already has developmental delays at only 5 months (mostly gross motor so far, she seems ok in other areas). The toys people have bought her for
learning to walk she might not use until she’s 2, if ever. We just don’t know. I don’t want to be storing stuff for that long, especially because it hurts my heart that she can’t do things babies her age should be doing.
I want to politely ask people to stop buying her toys because we already have too many and she won’t be able to play with many of them for quite a while. We are also drowning in clothes because there are 3 slightly older girl babies in the family and I get loads of beautiful hand-me-downs. Our baby is having a gastrointestinal feeding tube placed on Halloween so her clothing also needs to be somewhat adaptive, and people don’t really realize that zippered sleepers are out and so are all onesies.
I put together a little Amazon wish list of a few useful things at different price points. I haven’t shared it with anyone yet, but with Christmas coming, would that be ok? Most of the things we actually need are really $$$ (like a special bath seat for hypotonic toddlers and fuel for the endless trips to specialists 2 hours away) but I definitely don’t want to ask for money. She’s too young to really enjoy experiences. I figured having something people could look at to see sort of what things she can actually use would maybe help stop the onslaught of items.
Are there ways to handle this better? I have very little sleep these days and I just feel overwhelmed so any advice is appreciated. I don’t want to be rude or hurt feelings.